We need coffee
2010-08-09 17:101. Yesterday was my brother's twenty-fifth birthday observed. (His actual birthday was on Friday, when I took him out for sushi for lunch and then he spent the remainder of the day, quite reasonably, with his wife.) There was a lot of barbecue. There was a cheesecake which had ominously silly problems in the baking and of which there is nothing left today, so I think I can stop worrying. He's a mechanical engineer, so I got him a T-shirt of Isambard Kingdom Brunel from Sydney Padua's Lovelace and Babbage. Now he wants to know about the historical Brunel. (This is the correct response. Anyone's got a favorite biography, I'll take recommendations.) It's amazing how much space in a refrigerator can be occupied by what looked like a perfectly normal amount of corn on the cob.
2. We also watched the first half of A Star Is Born (1954). Even taking into account the hackwork post-premiere cuts imposed by the studio (and still incompletely restored) and the first-act musical-within-a-musical finale that is slightly too reminiscent of Singin' in the Rain (1952), I am incredibly impressed. I am wary of movie musicals; I watched more of them than I can count as a small child and have been repeatedly depressed to discover how many of them do not hold up for me as an adult. This one turns out to be another one of those films that sounds, in outline, so painfully conventional you'd flee from it at parties for fear of being shown photos of its grandchildren between the canapés and the potted plant—an obscure talent is spotted by a star on the wane who takes her under his wing and introduces her to an environment where she can bloom; intermission; I expect things to go pear-shaped from here on—but in practice it's a lot more like The Red Shoes (1948) than 42nd Street (1933). Also, Judy Garland and James Mason. Unless it falls apart appallingly in the second half, it's going on my shortlist.
3. In memory of Patricia Neal.
2. We also watched the first half of A Star Is Born (1954). Even taking into account the hackwork post-premiere cuts imposed by the studio (and still incompletely restored) and the first-act musical-within-a-musical finale that is slightly too reminiscent of Singin' in the Rain (1952), I am incredibly impressed. I am wary of movie musicals; I watched more of them than I can count as a small child and have been repeatedly depressed to discover how many of them do not hold up for me as an adult. This one turns out to be another one of those films that sounds, in outline, so painfully conventional you'd flee from it at parties for fear of being shown photos of its grandchildren between the canapés and the potted plant—an obscure talent is spotted by a star on the wane who takes her under his wing and introduces her to an environment where she can bloom; intermission; I expect things to go pear-shaped from here on—but in practice it's a lot more like The Red Shoes (1948) than 42nd Street (1933). Also, Judy Garland and James Mason. Unless it falls apart appallingly in the second half, it's going on my shortlist.
3. In memory of Patricia Neal.
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